Zachary obediently brought the shuttle down where Ishigo had indicated, landed it and shut off the engines. He listened in to the plan of action, then he readied himself for departure. He took stock of what he had- One suit of Vanguard armour, with sword and shield; his wind cannon; the plasma rifle; the rugged backpack; his improvised toolkit; two 'iron knuckles' still in his jacket pockets; a water bottle; the engineering reference book (he had considered returning it to Leo the Librarian, but he figured that he was the only one in Sovereign capable of using it and that he would need it later); the kinetic shield projector hidden under his jacket; a few toiletries; whatever scrap and knickknacks were in his two trap cores; and, significantly at this point of time, the briefcase containing the payment from Matthias Winters. After a moment's thought, he heaped the armour and weapons together and then, in a flash of red light and pop of rushing air, he sent the contents of the pile into a trap core.

Zachary then took a moment to observe his own appearance in a small mirror he had grouped with his toiletries. If he was going out into public, he needed to not look like he had spent the past year in a wasteland and had just come out of a fight. But as inspection confirmed, his regular hygiene habits throughout the past year had ensured that he wasn't an utter mess, so he simply took a facecloth, applied some water to it from his bottle, and cleaned his face of the sweat and grime it had gained during their escape, and then brushed down his hair with a hairbrush. Helping with appearances was that his jacket was mostly new.

Finally, he took the briefcase, opened it discretely, counted out two stacks of cash and put them in his pockets, then closed the briefcase and put it safely at the bottom of his backpack. Checking that the rest of his stuff was still inside his bag, he stood up and hoisted the backpack onto his shoulders. From the cockpit, he grabbed a key and handed it to Raeven. "This is the key to the shuttle. You can use it to lock and unlock the doors from the outside." He then nodded to Ishigo. "I'm ready to go now."

As they left the shuttle and started walking towards Kell, Zachary said, "I've run the figures in my head, and I know how many cores we'll need to get to Vantus, as well as how much that will cost. I can buy that many, plus food and whatnot, and then we won't have to stop at any more towns along the way, making us harder to track."